When I think about love poetry, I am going to be honest and say that I really can’t think of any off the top of my head. Except for “Roses are red and violets are blue,” this of course is a “poem” that we all recite and joke around with when we are much younger. I put the word in quotes because after today’s discussion on Browning’s poem “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” my opinion on what constitutes a love poem has completely changed. We looked at the first five sonnets of the poem and there were parts of it that made me cringe a little, because I would never associate love with certain images. There is a lot of darkness that is associated with love or the act of loving someone. The fifth sonnet seemed to prove the point because Browning includes the ashes of her brother and mentions how she empties the urn and wants her lover to stand there with her and wait for the ashes to blow away.